AFTER A ROCK BAND has been broken up for 40 years, it would be quite extraordinary for all the original members to get together again for a reunion.

Come to think of it, after four decades, it would be incredible enough if they were all still alive. And it would be nothing short of a miracle if they still had the wherewithal to actually play the songs they wrote when they were young.

But that’s the amazing story of the Ace of Cups, the one and only all-female rock band from San Francisco in the psychedelic ’60s. Against all odds, these five women, now in their 60s, are poised to make history again, taking the stage in a couple of weeks for a long-delayed encore.

On May 14, the Ace of Cups is one of the bands on the bill for hippie icon Wavy Gravy’s 75th Birthday Boogie, a benefit concert for the Seva Foundation’s international health programs at Richmond’s new Craneway Pavilion.

“The Ace of Cups rides again,” laughed Novato’s Diane Vitalich, the band’s drummer, sounding as if she hardly believes it herself. “It’s a new beginning for us.”

In the jazz age of the 1920s and ’30s, a handful of “girl bands” were popular novelty acts in vaudeville and in early sound films. But in the ’60s, with the advent of male-dominated rock ‘n’ roll, women who played electric guitar or bass or drums were few and far between.

So when Denise Kaufman, a San Francisco native who played guitar and harmonica, was approached by lead guitarist Mary Ellen Simpson about forming a female rock group, she was understandably incredulous.

“When she said she was starting an all-girl band, I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous, the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of,'” Kaufman remembered, speaking from her home in Venice. “I was a pretty independent woman. I was already pushing boundaries, and yet when she proposed the idea of an all-woman band, I was like, ‘What?'”

Despite her skepticism, Kaufman, who had just come off the bus as one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters, decided to give it a try, arriving at the first jam on the back of a motorcycle.

“I’ll never forget when she walked in,” recalled keyboardist Marla Hunt. “She’s wearing cowboy boots, a very short skirt, a wild fur coat and a fireman’s hat. Her hair’s sticking straight out on the side. She’s got these big glasses and this big guitar case. She’s like 5-3, and it’s almost as big as she is. Even in San Francisco, she stood out.”

It didn’t take long for Kaufman, Vitalich, Simpson, Hunt and bassist Mary Gannon to begin jamming in an apartment on Waller Street. When hard drugs and media exposure ruined the Haight Ashbury, the women moved into a big house in Marin’s Tamalpais Valley, using it as a residence and rehearsal space. Their astrologer manager named them after the tarot card showing a cup with five streams of water, and it wasn’t long before their cup began to fill with the promise of big things ahead.

The weekend after the Monterey Pop Festival, the women got their first big break, opening a free concert in Golden Gate Park for a little-known rock guitarist named Jimi Hendrix.

The band eventually played all the psychedelic ballrooms in the city and were offered recording contracts from Warner Brothers and Capitol Records. Both were rejected by the band’s male managers, regretfully costing the women their shot at making an album.

As the women began raising families, they knew their days as free-spirit rock musicians were passing by.

“As women, we sang about giving birth, we sang about our children, we sang about things that mattered to women,” Kaufman recalled. “And we tried to juggle it all for a couple of years. But there wasn’t a lot of support for us to be doing everything.”

By 1972, the original band was no more. Vitalich stayed in Marin, cleaning houses, playing drums in numerous groups, including her own Diane V Band, and eventually becoming a massage therapist. Kaufman learned to play the bass and now teaches yoga in Southern California when she isn’t on her family farm in Hawaii. Gannon and Hunt also live in Hawaii, where Gannon teaches music and Hunt operates a nanny business. Simpson is a mental health specialist in Weaverville, the Trinity County seat.

“We had a lot of differences in the band, I have to say,” Vitalich confessed. “There was lots of bumping heads. But, despite that, we’ve stayed in touch and remained friends. We’re like sisters.”

The Ace of Cups unlikely revival began in 2009, when the Marin History Museum invited Vitalich and Simpson to perform at a benefit gala for Marin Rocks, the planned rock history exhibit.

Filmmaker Jesse Block saw the show and began collecting old photos and films for an Ace of Cups documentary. Some of the band’s homemade recordings were posted on an Ace of Cups website. And when the opportunity came for the entire band to reunite for the Wavy Gravy birthday concert, the women, most grandmothers now, realized that their time had come — again.

“After we started having kids, every time we tried to get together, it was always about juggling family,” Kaufman remarked. “But now we’re at a point where we don’t have young children that we’re responsible for. It isn’t the ’60s, but we’re in our 60s. So in a way there’s a freedom that we have now that’s a lot like the freedom we had then.”